5 Ways To Encourage Mindful Habits In Children

I’ve been practicing mindfulness regularly for just under a year now. It has improved my life in so many ways! I’d never really thought about encouraging my children to adopt those practices – mindfulness was always “my time”.

Recently my youngest came home from school and told me he was being bullied. His behaviour in school and at home had been slipping, and I could finally see why! Seeing my son struggle has been hard on all of us: I needed to do something! When I stopped to think about it, I don’t know why I hadn’t been doing this for months already. Although I only thought to do this when I knew there was a problem, all of the activities I came up with are perfect for any time!

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

5 ways to encourage mindful habits in your children.

To make your new activities really have impact, make them part of your everyday routine. This will help you make sure you never forget, and your child will learn to look forward to it!

Colour in together.This gorgeous colouring book from Kylie Johnson is full of mindfulness colouring and affirmations. Sit down with the kids and colour a page or two together. You may find that while they are distracted they find it easier to talk to you about what’s on their minds.

Keep a family journal. Seeing everyone in a family write down their thoughts and feelings will encourage them to participate. Don’t worry if some family members don’t feel comfortable doing it at first: you don’t want it to become a battleground.

Take time to sit down and relax with them. Cosmic Kids Yoga do some really wonderful mindfulness and relaxation videos for kids: instead of putting on the latest kids cartoon, why not put these on for one evening a week? We’re going to do it after our weekly drama lesson – this cuts out arguing over the remote in the short space we have between drama and bed. Double win!

Encourage your child to face their problems. In my weekly mindfulness session on Facebook, I focus on turning a negative event from the last week into a positive one, by looking at it objectively and learning from it.

Focus on the happy times. Train your child to look for the positives in life by making time to focus on them. We enjoy talking about our day’s “best bits” before bed.

How do you encourage your children to be mindful? Let me know in the comments!

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2 thoughts on “5 Ways To Encourage Mindful Habits In Children”

So excited to read this one because I was just thinking yesterday that we might all be better off if we all did mindfulness. Hope the bullying issue stops and at least he had a superb mum in his corner, one of the best from what I can see.

We really would! I do a weekly mindfulness session on Facebook and even though it’s me running the session I feel worse if I don’t do it. The bullying seems to be getting better, although he is still resisting going to school 🙁